Election Central Saturday Roundup
Palin Lies About Ethics Report's Finding
Sarah Palin falsely told reporters this morning that the Alaska legislature's ethics report on Trooper-Gate clears her of any wrongdoing. "And if you read the report, you'll see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member. You got to read the report, sir," Palin said. In fact, the report says that Palin violated the state's ethics codes in bringing pressure upon cabinet members to take retaliatory actions against her ex-brother-in-law.
Obama Thanks McCain For Calling Him A Decent Man
At a stop in Philadelphia this morning, Barack Obama thanked John McCain for telling his own audiences to be respectful, and that Obama is a decent man. "I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric in his town hall meeting yesterday, and I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other," Obama said.
Obama In Philadelphia
Barack Obama is touring through Philadelphia, today, holding multiple rallies around the city. Obama held an 8:15 a.m. ET rally at Progress Plaza, a 9:30 a.m rally at the Mayfair Diner, an 11:15 a.m. rally at Vernon Park, and he has one more scheduled for at 1:10 p.m. ET, at the intersection of South 52nd Street and Locust Street. Joe Biden does not have any public events.
McCain In Iowa, Palin In Pennsylvania
John McCain has a 12:30 p.m. ET rally in Davenport, Iowa -- an odd choice for a visit, considering how polling right now has Barack Obama winning Iowa by a more than double-digit margin. Sarah Palin held a rally at 10 a.m. ET this morning in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Poll: McCain Has Narrow Edge In North Carolina
A new North Carolina poll from Marshall Marketing gives John McCain a 48%-46% lead in this new swing state, within the ±4.5% margin of error. The same poll also shows Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan with a 44%-43% edge over Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, within the same margin of error.
Dem Senator To GOPer: Take Down Ad That Features Me
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has called upon fellow Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith (R) to take down an ad that used old video of Wyden praising Smith, so as to make it appear as if Wyden was endorsing him. In fact, Wyden just recently did a commercial for Democratic nominee Jeff Merkley.
He's in Iowa again?! The state he's losing by 10-15 points?!
There are like no words.
October 11, 2008 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's in Pennsylvania again?! The state he's winning by 12 points?!
Heh. Ironic to say that McSame is making Obama waste his time and money defending a safe Blue state like PA :-)
P.S. Data from http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ -- Scroll waaay down to PA and look at the trend-adjusted, 538-regression, and snapshot numbers.
October 11, 2008 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Internal polling must be telling McCain a different story regarding Iowa. Also Obama is spending a helluva lot of time in Pennsylvania lately, me thinks that is showing to be a much closer race than the public polls are showing.
I wonder if Palin will still drop the puck tonight at they Flyers home opener.
October 11, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
My guess is yes, she does--but that it's met with much more mixed results than McCain's campaign might hope for.
October 11, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Didn't Philly fans once boo Santa Claus?
October 11, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why do you have an expectation that internal polls would be more reliable than public polls? Surely, everyone has an interest in being correct, and collectively the polling companies have huge samples ...
October 11, 2008 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because they have up to date registration numbers, and also have those demographic breakdown databases that can identify a potential voter by the type of chewing gum they buy.
October 11, 2008 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's more about not having anywhere else to go. The bottom has dropped out. So might as well go everywhere to spread the hate around.
http://pufferfish.typepad.com/
October 11, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Palin lies".
And in other news, water is wet.
October 11, 2008 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
no guys the only reason McCain is in Iowa is because the Giuliani team is directing his on the ground and making these decisions for him. As easy as that. This is the team that poured all their efforts into one state remember? So in that light it makes sense. Iowa is a waste of time. Obama is head there by 15 points. By that measure McCain could be in Michigan still.
October 11, 2008 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm figuring McCain is holding out hope that he'll be able to hold on to all Bush States except for New Mexico and Colorado. If that's the case he'd still win, however Iowa going to Obama would give Obama the close win. So he sees Iowa as his best chance to flip - as I mentioned above his internal polling numbers are probably showing Iowa closer, and Obama is seemingly taking it for granted. Iowa is also a smaller state, so it's probably cheaper to cover with ads and demographically one McCain thinks he could win.
He's playing small ball right know, knows that if he's going to win it will be close. He can't defend the bigger states because even if he defended and held those, unless he flipped a Kerry State (which is looking unlikely) he loses if he doesn't convince one of New Mexico, Colorado or Iowa to stick with him.
If he does to defend Virginia, Florida or NC, spending a lot of his time and money there, he is surely going to lose New Mexico, Colorado and Iowa. He's hoping the traditionally Red states stay Red and is focusing on toss-up states.
October 11, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that, in general, you give the McCain campaign more credit with respect to strategy than they actually deserve. A lot more credit.
Palin is going to West Virginia. If West Virginia is seriously in play, Iowa is irrelevant. I think it's entirely possible that McCain is going places for economic reasons rather than strategic reasons. Economic reasons revolving around campaign finances.
October 11, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
It does not seem wise to rely on one internal poll against some 10-15 polls out there that show otherwise.
In my reading, all that is left for McLame is avoid the humiliation of a landslide. He should do some reality check and should be trying to defend at least IN, WV, and GA. That's what I'd be doing. His going to Iowa is nothing more than mavericky.
Obama's 4 rallies in PA today is to consolidate his double digit lead there and go to other battleground states during the weekdays.
October 11, 2008 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with this theory is that unless the public polling is waaay off, both CO and NM are decidedly better states for McCain than Iowa, where Obama has been polling significantly above his national numbers all year. If there's been even public IA poll showing a McCain lead since May, I haven't seen it. At this point it's just not a swing state. His MI numbers are much better, and he's abandoned that. Obama's Arizona numbers are better than McCain's IA numbers. It's just bizarre.
If the McCain campaign had evinced any competence to this point, I'd be worried they know something we don't. As it stands, though, it's just one more head-scratcher.
October 11, 2008 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama asks the crowd in Philadelphia, "Are you better off than you were four weeks ago?"
Touché.
October 11, 2008 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm in Iowa. I was hoping we had seen the last of him.
MSNBC said he thinks the only chance he has is to win all the states Bush got in 2004. So he has to try to compete in Iowa and Nevada even though I think it's pretty much a lost cause.
There are a lot of evangelicals here - single issue voters who'll vote anti-choice. That's his only shot, but I think the majority (i.e. non-evangelicals) are motivated enough to get out and vote this year.
Last time, the right-wing churches brought people to the polls by the bus load.
October 11, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Adding to this: I see very few McCain yard signs, even in very Republican neighborhoods. But I'm seeing lots of "Vote Pro-Life" signs.
October 11, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric in his town hall meeting yesterday, and I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other,"
It sounds like he's trying to condition a misbehaving child :|
October 11, 2008 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gordon Smith has to be the McCain of the Senate races. He's running an inept campaign that's largely built on smoke & mirrors to sell himself to the voters as something that's he's not. He's trying to be very Mavericky, but also trying to Run Out The Clock before the voters catch on.
When the polls are close, you almost wonder if it's a brillant strategy as all the nuttiness and stupidity seems to be missed by the voters.
But it misses that it's a house of cards strategy, and if a card comes out, it risks the whole thing coming down rapidly. It really doesn't take much of a card to come out - he duece or three can do it, doesn't even have to be a face card. They all add up the same in a smoke & mirrors campaign.
I think we're see this with Coleman. He was running a McCain style campaign built around *not* being Al Franken, and that Franken didn't have the character to be a Senator. Then the Economy hit, followed by ClothesGate... and you can see the cards coming down. Bad time for Coleman, since Obama's numbers in Minny are shooting up, and being able to couple the ticket as Obama-Franken down the stretch is going to help Franken a good deal.
In OR, the Economy is hitting. Bad for Smith. Now his campaign made a bad defensive move of claiming Wyden unto themselves. This is very Rovian - trying to take the opponents strength wrap yourself in it. (People focus on the other half of this - taking the opponents strength and making it a weakness for the opponent) We see a *ton* of this in the McCain campaign as Schmidt and the boyz keep taking Obama catch phrases/themes and peppering them into McCain stump speaches, advertising, and into Talking Points that the McCain surrogates blast on every media outlet. They also tried to use HRC's and Biden's words against Obama, when it should have been obvious that Biden and HRC would easily swat it down in support of Obama.
Smith tried this, a defensive reaction to Wyden endorsing Merkley. "See... Wyden has said nice things about me too." It's as if they couldn't see the obvious next move - Wyden would double down in his support of Merkley. Which is even worse than the initial endorsement ad.
You're 20+ days out. You really want that endorsement to get out there, weather it, don't antogonize Wyden to get really active in stumping for Merkley, and in a week get back to other issues as the endorsement becomes yesterday's news.
But in the Rovian playbook that's evolved to 2008 and we see Schmidt playing, when you're Running Out The Clock, you're focused on Winning The Day/Cycle... and often take your eye off 2-3 moves down the road. It's all about Today.
We've seen this hurt the McCain camp. Worse still for them, they seem lost in the punch of it since they had some earlier "success" with it in burning days off the clock.
The problem is that when you lock into Today, you are constantly running the risk of doing something that you think Wins Today but really opens up Losing The Next Day *big*.
We've seen that constantly over the past month from the McCain Campaign. At this point, it's a freaking trainwreck as almost every Day Strategy is a failed strategy within a few days, sometimes even within a few hours.
Smith is pulling it now. It was nakedly obvious what Wyden/Merkley's response to that ad would be. Anyone thinking 2-3 moves down the road would see that. It's not something where you can pull a Rovian ploy of "let's confuse the issue" because Wyden is the one who has control of the issue - who he endorses in this race, why he's endorsing that candidate, and why he thinks the other guy needs to go.
Just a stunningly dumb move.
John
October 11, 2008 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
not to be too picky, but the only way to be ahead by "a more than double-digit margin" is 100%-0%.
October 11, 2008 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's in Pennsylvania again?! The state he's winning by 12 points?!
Heh. Ironic to say that McSame is making Obama waste his time and money defending a safe Blue state like PA :-)
P.S. Data from http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ -- Scroll waaay down to PA and look at the trend-adjusted, 538-regression, and snapshot numbers.
October 11, 2008 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ooops... meant as a reply to Tyler's comment above.
October 11, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Palin Lied" - whodathunkit.
October 11, 2008 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the Washington Monthly:
The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015130.php
October 11, 2008 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Palin lied" is in danger of being filed under 'not news'.
October 11, 2008 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
She's opened Palindora's Box
http://thetruthburns.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/we%e2%80%99ve-gone-from-silly-season-to-hate-week-what%e2%80%99s-next-kristallnacht/
October 11, 2008 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans lie.
Republicans steal.
Palin is Republican.
Palin lies . . .
October 11, 2008 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not only does McCain get it. There is proof. And Obama was nowhere to be found. No surprise.
If Obama can claim good judgment on the war then McCain owns the good judgment on the economy.
Hard evidence:
http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=letter050506ceg0.jpg
October 12, 2008 1:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are far better videos where you can really hear the boos.
October 12, 2008 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink